People love making arguments without numbers and without viewing seasons and players in context. Scoop is a victim of this. Basically Scoop's sins are that he's not as athletic as Flynn and not as dynamic as Sherm. Otherwise he compares favorably to any PG we've had on the Hill. Here are some numbers to actually substantiate this claim (though not every number I went through when I did this exact same exercise twice last year):
Record: In two years as a primary member of the rotation and the team's primary ball-handler, Scoop has been on two teams to pile up a 57-13 record.
Turnovers/TO ratio: Scoop averaged 2.9/game (higher than you'd like but in line with almost every PG that has played here -- Sherm and Z each posted significantly higher numbers every year they started) and posted a 2:1 A/TO ratio -- something J Hart did once in his career, IIRC.
Assists: 5.9/game is the third best average by any junior in Cuse history. Outside of Sherm (3x) and Pearl (3x), only three players ever averaged more in a season (Sims, Griffin and Hart) and all three did it as seniors.
Shooting: 41.5% from the floor, 35.7 from 3. Both numbers are in line with almost any season any PG put up other than Sherm, IIRC (again I did all this last year and don't feel like doing it again). Bottom line: Very few PGs -- Autry as a senior, Sherm, Pearl -- every put up shooting numbers any better than those.
Lost contributions: It certainly appears scoop regressed (all shooting percentages, assists per minute dropped sharply) from 09-10 to 10-11. But when Rautins, Onuaku and Johnson left they took 39.1 points, 17.0 rebounds, 7.7 assists and 4.6 steals per game with them. And they were efficient too: Onuaku shot just under 70%, Rautins was at about 44%, but he was over 40% from three and Johnson was at 50%/41.5% (from 3). That is a TON of efficient offense to replace. It's one thing to replace a double-figure scorer like Harris or Devo, who had talent but a penchant for bad shots and turnovers. It's another to replace two guys who ended up in the NBA and a guy who may have been as good a low-post offensive threat as we've had in my lifetime as a fan (going back to the late 80s).
I don't know (and couldn't care any less) if Scoop is our Romo or not. I also think there is plenty of room for him to improve upon his performance from last year (poor shot selection at times, too much dribbling, some careless turnovers). But, people who don't look at his game and realize that if he merely cuts down on the occasional turnover (let's say 2.9 to 2.25), he's likely to post as good a year as we've gotten from a point guard, this side of Sherm, Pearl and (maybe) Flynn (never thought he ran the floor exceptionally well but he was obviously a tough player to defend). Scoop has a chance to easily put up comparable career numbers to Autry and Hart (He catches Autry with a good year assist-wise and 12 ppg puts him at 27th on the career list, not far behind both Autry and Hart) despite starting for just two years (or 2.5 if you want to consider him a de facto starter in 09-10).
